New PowerCLI Release: PowerCLI 6.5 R1

PowerCLI 6.5 R1

VMware just release a new version of PowerCLI just today. Like every new release, they have packed with one with a ton of new features, and updates to the existing cmdlets to help with automation and daily operations.

Updated Cmdlets

Move-VM – This cmdlet has been updated to support the ability to vMotion machines between vCenters. This process is known as Cross vCenter vMotion, and this will also allow the VMs to traverse between separate SSO domains. This is something that wasn’t available with the GUI.

New-VM – This cmdlet has been updated to support configuring specific number of CPU cores.

Open-VMConsoleWindow– This cmdlet has been updated to work with the latest version of VMware Remote Console (VMRC).

Various other cmdlets have also received updated views to allow access to the new vSphere 6.5 APIs.

New Storage Modules

With this new version of PowerCLI comes a lot of new storage modules that adds a lot of functionality for vSAN, VVOLs and working with virtual disks. Now there are over a dozen cmdlets that focus on the entire lifecycle of a vSAN cluster, and the entire process of creating a vSAN cluster can be automated with PowerCLI.

Get-VsanClusterConfiguration

Get-VsanDisk

Get-VsanDiskGroup

Get-VsanFaultDomain

Get-VsanResyncingComponent

Get-VsanSpaceUsage

New-VsanDisk

New-VsanDiskGroup

New-VsanFaultDomain

Remove-VsanDisk

Remove-VsanDiskGroup

Remove-VsanFaultDomain

Set-VsanClusterConfiguration

Set-VsanFaultDomain

Test-VsanClusterHealth

Test-VsanNetworkPerformance

Test-VsanStoragePerformance

Test-VsanVMCreation

Update-VsanHclDatabase

Theses aren’t the only new cmdlets that was added. There is a new suite of cmdlets just to work with the VM’s hard drives. With these new cmdlets you can work with the virtual drive independently from the VM.

Copy-VDisk

Get-VDisk

Move-VDisk

New-VDisk

Remove-VDisk

Set-VDisk

The last group of new cmdlets help facilitate automated management of the VVOL replication features which are new to vSphere 6.5. Finding fault domains and replication groups, syncing replication groups and preparing and starting the failover process to the target site are some of the new features.

Get-SpbmFaultDomain

Get-SpbmReplicationGroup

Get-SpbmReplicationPair

Start-SpbmReplicationFailover

Start-SpbmReplicationPrepareFailover

Sync-SpbmReplicationGroup

Compatibility with vCenter

As with all versions of PowerCLI, it’s also backwards compatible going back to vSphere 5.5!